When the Womb Is a Battlefield

In our struggle to remind our fellow citizens that pregnancy involves two people, we often confront the challenge of saying things in new or better ways in order to catch the fleeting attention of others. It has been said that, over the past 10 years or so due to the advent of social media, the average attention span has decreased. What that means for us who defend life is that, if we don’t catch the recipient of our message within the first few moments, we might as well be talking to a wall.

This brings me to the idea of the expectant mother’s womb as a battlefield rather than as the safest place on earth for a growing preborn child. Efforts to protect and preserve the preborn baby and his mother are frequently defined these days as a “war on women” even though it is the perpetrators of the sexual revolution who are truly waging that war. Columnist Thomas Sowell writes, “If you are looking for a real war on women, you might look at the practice of aborting girl babies after an ultrasound picture shows that they are girls. These abortions are the most basic kind of discrimination, and their consequences have already been demonstrated in countries like China and India, where sexually discriminatory abortions and female infanticide have produced an imbalance in the number of adult males and females.”

The fundamental problem with our attitude toward expectant mothers and their babies is that our culture has gone to ridiculous lengths to alienate that mother from her child while, at the same time, assuring her that her fundamental rights as a woman entitle her to kill that baby if she so chooses. Had the nation not gone to that bad place first with our laws, our attitudes, and our self absorption, such things as gendercide abortions would never have been considered. If we are honest, every abortion—whether it’s because of race, gender, a health problem, boyfriend pressure, or inconvenience—is a tragic wound on the human family.

Yet, we didn’t get to this place overnight. In fact, as far back as mankind’s history extends there have been wars masquerading as good and just efforts to get rid of perceived enemies, take property away from those who were deemed unfit to have it, and so forth. Remember, cavemen were barbarians. But it seems we have nothing on them.

As the yammering persists on what yesterday’s Supreme Court decision really means for the average American, consider this: What does the legislated “right” to murder your own child mean for America? The family unit is already dysfunctional, fatherless in more cases than not, and crumbling from within. No healthcare plan will repair that. But we can.

I have to wonder, though, if we will.

My 35-word sound bite for the day is this: When the preborn baby becomes a welcome guest, when the womb becomes a hospitality suite, and when the two-parent family is the norm, there will be peace, not war. Until then, the bloody battle rages.